Posted by: Adam Aston on January 5, 2009

For all the buzz about the miraculous curative potential of Obama’s impending green spending deluge, keep in mind just how long, slow and incremental any change is going to be. The US economy is so big — with so many people, so many cities, houses and vehicles — it’s impossible to get just how many consumers and businesses have to change the way they buy, use and think about energy. That’s why environmental change cannot come strictly from Prius-packed wealthy urban and suburban zipcodes. It has to bubble up from rural and urban middle- and low-income areas alike, as well.

This week, the New Yorker profiles Van Jones, an organizer who’s doing more than anyone else to explicitly address the divide of race and class that could slow broader change. Elizabeth Kolbert profiles Jones’ charismatic gift, spanning ghetto school rooms to gatherings of affluent students to show how he’s firing up passions from the ghetto to the country club. Check it out here:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/12/090112fa_fact_kolbert

About

BusinessWeek correspondents John Carey and Mark Scott, cover the green scene, keeping on top of the business aspects of energy, the environment and climate change, as well as the technologies, policies, markets and people that are shaping how the earth's resources will be used in the century ahead.